Performance vs. Education

Hey everyone! I'm a senior in high school going on in music. I've been in contact with many different college tuba teachers, and every one of them seems to be under the impression that a degree in performance is useless. (Dan Perantoni likened a performance degree to a degree in under-water basket weaving, and R. Winston Morris (Tenn. Tech) says that a degree in performance "isn't worth the paper they write it on". Is performance *that* bad?